JAMES AGATE EVERSHED (1947)

Drama critic for the London Sunday Times (1923-1947), book reviewer for the Daily Express, novelist, essayist, diarist, and raconteur.


He is remembered for his wit and perverse yet lovable personality, the sparkle and fundamental seriousness of his dramatic criticism, and his racy, entertaining diary, called, characteristically, Ego, 9 vol. This reveals him at his best and his most infuriating: full of zest for life, untiring, wise, perceptive, witty, able to convey an impression of the spirit of the age; but also vain, cocky, opinionated, capricious, and always romanticizing himself so that the self-portrait he draws is larger than life-size.


Agate went to London to become a journalist, working as drama critic for several papers. During World War I he served as an army officer. Between 1917, when, as he said, he "stormed London" with a lively account of an uneventful war and had been published 44 volumes of his drama, book, and film reviews, essays, novels, and surveys of the contemporary theatre for 1923-26.


He aimed at clarity and cogency of style, but in his books, as in his brilliant conversation, the argument is often interrupted by asides and anecdotes. He was perhaps one of the last of a long line of English dramatic critics to take for granted his position as arbiter of taste and was also one of the last outstanding journalist of a great age of English journalism.


In 1942 Agate ended his own obituary published in The Strand Magazine: "His enemies will miss him".